River site

To give background on river sites I have to say that they are the most challenging. You have to ford the river to set up, sting nets across, get bats out, and tear down. You are traversing algae-covered slippery, smooth rocks trying not to get gear wet.

Another thing to know is that every bat emerges in the evenings and then goes to get a drink. This is why we often net over puddles, ponds, creeks, and occasionally rivers. Hannah and I set up two high nets that were triple 18 meters. It took us a long time to get started because conditions were challenging to say the least. When we finally were making the final preparations to open the nets we were watching tens of bats flying around us. I opened my net and hers was most of the way open and bam! I had seven bats in the net, as I walk to the first one; eight, nine, ten, fifteen! I was overwhelmed with bats! I called Hannah over to help and our boss Chris even came down the hill to lend a hand and ID them all. At the end of the night we ended up sitting for only about fifteen minutes of the five hours and the grand total of bats was 66! Almost all of them were little browns. There was five or so reds, one big brown, two hoarys, and a handful of long ears. I have to say that my bat removal skills have been fine-tuned and now I am very confident, but that didn't last long. Confidence led to my carelessness when removing a big brown the next night and I put my finger in the wrong spot and got bitten. Oh well, no blood, just lesson learned.

We are here in Bellefonte, PA until next Tuesday, a week from today, and then half of the group will rejoin PATH and the other half will remain here with Chelsea.

back to work

With break over we all made our way back to WV. Parsons this time. We camped by a very pretty river. We are continuing the PATH project. All is going well. We are getting some bats. Yesterday myself, and five other techs moved to PA. Back to Bellefonte where this all began. We are staying at Chris' and commuting to our sites that are a continuation of the very first project that I did in Pine Creek area. We will be here for about a week, maybe more then back to PATH, although my end date of Aug. 5 is fast approaching.

Last night I worked with the Boss-man, Chris. We got 12 bats! That is one of my personal best nights. I was looking at the sky because there is a meteor shower that is occurring now. The peak is July 28th but I did see one very large meteor! It was a good night.